BBC magics money for local news?

The front page of the current print edition of the Press Gazette carries the interesting news that the BBC will go ahead with plans for ultra-local news coverage online.

This is not new news - the idea has been mooted for some time and we have already covered this issue here.

PG's detailed report suggests that quite a lot of money is going to get pumped into the BBC's micronews venture, although no figures are mentioned. Unsurprisingly, industry bodies such as the Newspaper Society are gearing up for a fight, citing unfair competition that will duplicate existing local news services provided by the regional press and local radio.

One wonders where the money is going to come from. The licence fee awarded to the BBC in 2007 for the next few years, which was less than the amount asked for, has triggered a lot of cuts. Many BBC news journalists are facing the possible loss of their jobs. A number of planned BBC local radio stations, including one for Cheshire, were axed. And Hugh Berlyn, head of News Online, told me himself that the licence fee cuts meant we cannot expect a solitary dedicated news page on Aunty's website.

This begs the question - if BBC News Online does not have the funds to provide a dedicated news page for Cheshire, which we calculated would cost a fraction of £0.002 a month, how on earth do they propose to pay for a network of 60 ultra-local news websites?

And more intriguingly, if the BBC had already earmarked the budget for this proposal at some earlier date, why cannot it use that £0.002p or less per month to create a Cheshire news page now?